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16 October 2014
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Mike Boyle

I am from Drummuck near Maghera. I attended Trench Belfast in the mid-1960s and Seamus Heaney was one of my teachers. I am now working on a new play about N.Ireland in 1956. Would you believe it that as a "nipper" I was a Christmas Rhymer in South Derry and that then a few years later I took part in the famous mummering tradition of Newfoundland?

Most Of All You Won by Mike Boyle


But most of all you won鈥檛 find any pigs at all on the hawthorn hills of Drummuck
We killed a pig almost every fall and then used the bladder as our football.
No crrek crrek of the corncrake or can we see any low flying water duck.

We walked our white bullocks to Bellaghy fair and we never were a sook or a suck
Some of us were very small but we could make poitin as soon as we could crawl.
But most of all you won鈥檛 find any pigs at all on the hawthorn hills of Drummuck.

We ploughed the fields and rarely got stuck in the water clogged muck
We grew seedling plants both tall and small for farmers in far off Cushendall.
No crrek crrek of the corncrake or can we see any low flying water duck.

We gathered the potatoes and then we lifted the bags on to the old cattle truck
Then all of us both big and small played Gaelic football and this would end in a brawl.
But most of all you won鈥檛 find any pigs at all on the hawthorn hills of Drummuck.

Every family in Drummuck had a priest and they hoped that would bring them good luck
They spoke Italian and Latin talked about Rome far away from the parish of Mayogall.
No crrek crrek of the corncrake or can we see any low flying duck.

A pig鈥檚 back drumlin craved by a glacier eons ago and this name forever stuck.
Our past never dies and it lives today in the fragile fragments that my memory can recall.听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听
But most of all you won鈥檛 find any pigs at all on the hawthorn hills of Drummuck.
No crrek ,crrek of the corncrake or can we see any low flying听 water duck.



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